Tracking the Elusive "IP Application"

By Edward J. Finegold, Editor-in-Chief

The IP applications wave is like the next blockbuster movie hit – it sounds cool, everyone is talking about it, but no one knows any details. Most of the time, if you ask someone around the telco business what the hot new IP services actually will be, the response is something like, “well, email, web hosting, VoIP and video.” For the record – these are not the great new IP applications to which we look forward, but rather network functions already in use. The service provider's burden lies in deepening its expertise in IP applications and giving customers superior alternatives to what they already use. To serve enterprise customers this means deepening expertise in security, identity management, storage, hosted applications, content management and capabilities that take advantage of presence and mobility.

Application Outsourcing Grows Fast
IDC research estimates that the combined market for application services and web hosting will grow from approximately $7 billion to $14 billion within the next four years. The firm predicts the greatest growth will come from network- or web-resident applications, a $666 million market today that could see 500 percent growth by 2008. There are no secrets behind these numbers. Enterprises’ IT expenses are skyrocketing as they take on more devices and applications and have to secure and manage them all. Most of what these enterprises have pulled in-house involves repeatable functions that are necessary for running their business, but aren’t their competitive secret sauce.

What Did I Do With That Number?
People who use email and make phone calls often struggle with what can be called “information housekeeping.” People have multiple address books, contact databases, email inboxes, and voice mail accounts. The number of these accounts is increasing as people use more mobile email and messaging services and have more devices and applications that can store contact data. To help with the mess, and also help increase their career networking, many users are turning to web-based services like Plaxo and LinkedIn that automatically manage and update their business and personal contacts. This is basic stuff, but the kind of capability people use every day.

Enterprises have security concerns regarding these web-based services because they are outside of the corporation's control. Further, even some users equate the impersonal emails these services generate with spam. Telcos can provide secure versions of these services as part of a total offering and help overcome information security concerns. Email and messaging unification is a slightly bigger challenge, but is perhaps the next step given the number of email and messaging users the increasing number of email and messaging capable devices in the workplace. These are all practical ideas that attend to users' every day needs and provide secure alternatives to public, Internet-based providers.

No Spam. No Phishing
Of the most notorious of IP expense hogs are Spam and Phishing. These two Internet devils, spawned by hacker anarchists and hucksters, cost enterprises and their employees hundreds of millions per year, both as a result of the scams they perpetrate and the expense to combat them.

Spam, as all email users know, is unsolicited junk email that not only wastes disk space, but can carry viruses and worms. It also encourages users to visit places on the Internet employers and IT staff would rather they avoided. Phishing is a slightly more devious scam. Spammers pose as legitimate financial institutions and bombard corporations with email, with the intent to fool users into surrendering credit card information.

Like most other IT functions, commercial software exists to combat these common problems, but this is yet another growing expense corporations inherit with their basic IT infrastructure. If an enterprise can contract for an email solution with a carrier, it makes sense for it to pay a premium for a spam and phishing-free experience, courtesy of the service provider. Rather than throwing money at the problem and failing to solve it, enterprises should be able to count on their communications partners to clean their email before it's delivered.

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